Random Access-based Multiuser Computation Offloading for Devices in IoT Applications

TL;DR

This paper proposes a two-stage random access-based offloading scheme for IoT devices with sporadic tasks, aiming to improve resource efficiency and system stability in multiuser MEC environments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-stage offloading approach using multichannel random access tailored for sporadic IoT device tasks, enhancing efficiency and stability.

Findings

The proposed scheme effectively stabilizes multiuser offloading systems.

Latency outage probability is minimized under the new approach.

System performance improves with low signaling overhead.

Abstract

In various Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, a number of devices and sensors are used to collect data sets. As devices become more capable and smarter, they can not only collect data sets, but also process them locally. However, since most devices would be limited in terms of computing power and energy, they can take advantage of offloading so that their tasks can be carried out at mobile edge computing (MEC) servers. In this paper, we discuss computation offloading for devices in IoT applications. In particular, we consider users or devices with sporadic tasks, where optimizing resource allocation between offloading devices and coordinating for multiuser offloading becomes inefficient. Thus, we propose a two-stage offloading approach that is friendly to devices with sporadic tasks as it employs multichannel random access for offloading requests with low signaling overhead. The stability of the two-stage offloading approach is considered with methods to stabilize the system. We also analyze the latency outage probability as a performance index from a device perspective.